Will Huskie 'joke' make NIU smile?

DeKalb school could reap major benefits from Orange Bowl exposure

January 01, 2013|By Ted Gregory, Chicago Tribune reporter

Northern Illinois University defensive end Alan Baxter poses with his image (jersey number 90) last week in Miami. NIU's appearance in the Orange Bowl could be a major boon to the DeKalb school. (EMILY MICHOT, Miami Herald)

The red T-shirt emblazoned with "Kirk Herbstreit can bite me!" is a brisk seller at the Village Commons Bookstore across the street from Northern Illinois University. The shirt — a reference to the ESPN analyst's rant that the Huskies football team's entry in Tuesday's Orange Bowl "is an absolute joke" — is one example of the ripple effect sweeping across the campus in the corn stubble of DeKalb.

Other benefits have emerged and will continue to do so after the game against Florida State in Miami. Although those rewards may be complicated to track, Northern could reap an array of gains from what amounts to a four-hour, prime-time infomercial for the university of 23,000 about 60 miles west of Chicago.

NIU officials are somewhat reluctant to talk specifics, saying it's too early, but one administrator has said the university experienced a 19 to 25 percent increase in applications during a brief period after Northern was chosen for the Orange Bowl. And although NIU won't receive all of the Orange Bowl's $12 million payout, the school stands to collect a sizable chunk of it.

For now, one of the more tangible benefits is occurring at Village Commons, where manager Jody Boardman said this is the busiest time in the 42-year history of the store. Village Commons has had to reorder all NIU Orange Bowl items several times to accommodate demands of Huskie fans from Hawaii to Canada, Boardman said. She added that she is tired but "ecstatic."

"I feel like I live here," Boardman said, laughing. "I'm here more than I'm at home and then I bring things home with me because you have to go home and shower once in a while and feed your dog."

The exposure comes at a critical time for NIU, which has endured its share of unfavorable publicity, starting with a 2008 campus shooting that left six people dead and continuing through mid-December of 2012, when 22 members of a fraternity were charged in a freshman's alcohol-related death that officials blamed on hazing.

In October, authorities leveled felony charges against eight current workers and one former employee involved in an alleged scheme to sell university scrap materials and deposit the money in a private account. In November, NIU's police chief was placed on administrative leave amid indications his department withheld evidence in a rape case against a campus police officer.

Through all that turmoil, NIU's football success has been a source of pride. Reaching the Orange Bowl is unprecedented.

"We have had a lot of negative stuff happen," NIU senior defensive end SeanProgarsaid. The Orange Bowl "is huge for everybody. We came here (to Miami) knowing that, and we are going to come out here and represent them well."

The benefits of favorable exposure from such sudden, unexpected success on the football field has been researched and even has a name: the Flutie Effect, named for Doug Flutie. The Boston College quarterback flung a 67-yard "Hail Mary" touchdown pass in the final seconds of a 1984 game to beat defending national champion University of Miami.

Boston College, which had a modest national profile, experienced skyrocketing souvenir sales, dozens of nationally televised games, a rise in applications and an invitation to the Cotton Bowl and its $1 million payout. Since then, the university has been able to sustain the notoriety, but researchers contend that little if any correlation exists between heavy investment in athletics and economic growth for the university.

The sudden success in football and basketball can lead to sudden growth — typically at schools unaccustomed to achieving those lofty athletic heights — but sustaining it is difficult, the NCAA-sanctioned study, "The Empirical Effects of College Athletics," suggests.

This year, 70 teams play in 35 football bowl games, and some of those contests "are dogs" that don't pay much and rack up expenses for tickets and transportation, said University of Chicago economist Allen Sanderson, who researches sports economics.

"If you're a school on one end of the food chain, it could end up costing you money," he added. "At the other end, if you're Alabama or Notre Dame, that eight-figure check looks pretty nice."

The cautionary example is another football team called the Huskies — those from the University of Connecticut. In the 2011 Fiesta Bowl, UConn got steamrolled by the University of Oklahoma, then reportedly lost nearly $1.7 million, largely because the school had to pay for unsold tickets.

Still, a UConn spokesman told the Hartford Courant in March of that year, "We said the bowls are not going to make money, but we feel the residual effects of the bowl game are well worth it."

Other examples often cited include Ohio State losing $1 million and Virginia Tech losing nearly $1.8 million after their football teams played in 2009 bowl games.